We're Talking About Cheese...
Excerpt from the The Belly of Paris, Émile Zola (1840-1902)
(Paris Market, Photo: RLW - click on picture)
All around them the cheeses were stinking. On the two shelves at the back of the stall were huge blocks of butter: Brittany butter overflowing its baskets; Normandy butter wrapped in cloth, looking like models of bellies on to which a sculptor had thrown some wet rags; other blocks, already cut into and looking like high rocks full of valleys and crevices. Under the display counter of red marble veined with grey, baskets of eggs shown like white chalk; while on layers of straw in boxes were
bondons placed end to end, and
gournays arranged like medals, forming darker patches tinted with green. But for the most part the cheeses stood in piles on the table. There, next to the one-pound packs of butter, a gigantic
cantal was spread on leaves of white beet, as though split by blows from an axe; then came a golden Cheshire cheese, a
gruyere like a wheel fallen from some barbarian chariot, some Dutch cheeses suggesting decapitated heads smeared in dried blood and as hard as skulls – which has earned them the name of ‘death’s heads’. A
parmesan added its aromatic tang to the thick, dull smell of the others. Three
bries, on round boards, looked like melancholy moons. Two of them, very dry, were at the full; the third, in its second quarter, was melting away in a white cream, which had spread into a pool and flowed over the thin boards that had been put there in an attempt to hold it in check. Some
ports-saluts shaped like ancient discuses, bore the printed names of their makers. A
romantour in silver paper suggested a bar of nougat or some sweet cheese which had strayed into the realm of bitter fermentations. The
roqueforts, too, under their glass covers, had a princely air, their fat faces veined in blue and yellow, like the victims of some shameful disease common to rich people who had eaten too many truffles; while on a dish next to them stood the
fromages de chèvre, about the size of a child’s fist, hard and grey like the pebbles which the rams send rolling down stony paths as they lead their flock. Then came the strong smelling-cheeses: the
mont-d’ors, pale yellow, with a mild sugary smell; the
troyes, very thick and bruised at the edges, much stronger, smelling like a damp cellar; the
camemberts, suggesting high game; the
neufchâtels, the
limbourgs, the
marrolles, the
pont-l’évèques, each adding its own shrill note in a phrase that was harsh to the point of nausea; the
livarots, tinted red, as irritating to the throat as sulphur fumes; and finally, stronger than all the others, the
olivets, wrapped in walnut leaves, like the carcasses of animals which peasants cover with branches as they lie rotting in the hedgerow under the blazing sun. The warm afternoon has softened the cheeses; the mould on the rinds was melting and glazing over with the rich colors of red copper verdigris, like wounds that have badly healed; under the oak leaves, a breeze lifted the skin of the
olivets, which seemed to move up and down with the slow deep breathing of a man asleep. A
livarot was swarming with life; and behind the scales a
géromé flavored with aniseed gave off such a pestilential smell that all around it flies had dropped dead on the marble slab.
